E-fraud money is routed through web of bank a/cs to beat police

The rare e-fraud case which the police managed to crack was that of Rs 1 crore being fraudulently transferred from the bank account of a Mulund-based cosmetics firm in 12 transactions within a span of 45 minutes on January 31.

So far, the police have identified 26 persons, of which 16, including the kingpins, have been arrested. Investigations revealed that a few days before the crime, the complainant received an email from ‘circular@incometax india.com’ that read ‘Please be advised that the following notification will be made on the behalf of I-T dept of India. For more, download the attachment and read it’.

Police suspect that when he clicked on it, a trojan virus was installed on his computer, using which the Delhi-based main accused, Fazlur Rehman Khan alias Vicky, and his brother Shahrukh got access to his bank account password.

An officer linked to the investigations said, “Then began the maze of routing the money through fake accounts opened by middlemen. While the Khan brothers transferred the money, they used the services of middlemen who would scout for subsidiary account holders.”

Another officer said, “The subsidiary account holders transfer the stolen money to the main accused through the layers in exchange for an agreed amount, usually around 10% of the transfer sum.” In this case, police believe there were at least three middlemen, followed by a chain of subsidiary account holders.

A special team formed under DCP Mahesh Ghuriye solved the case by arresting the subsidiary account holders within a week, which eventually led them to the Khan brothers. “We have worked very hard on this case, sacrificing most of our weekends to solve it,” Ghuriye said.

The police have recovered around Rs 70 lakh, and the accused are in judicial custody.